The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (34 page)

(3) Late Hellenistic to Early Roman caves with domestic installations, some used as late as the Byzantine
period…

Strange is the scholar most associated with the Hellenistic Renaissance doctrine, which posits “the refounding of the village” in II BCE and “extensive remains” from that time.
^[473]
In Chapter 3 we examined this doctrine in detail and found it to entirely lack evidentiary foundation—there is no evidence at all of human presence in the Nazareth basin dating to Hellenistic times.

These pages have shown that evidence in the basin does not begin before
c
. 25 CE (oil lamps) and 50 CE (kokh tombs)
at the earliest
. Strange’s proposal of “Late Hellenistic to Early Roman caves with domestic installations” is fanciful. It is, in fact, a resuscitation of the old troglodyte theory already encountered in Chapter Two. There, we noted the words of M. Aviam that the caves of Galilee “are wet or damp from December to May.”
^[474]
  During those months they are uninhabitable, and no one has suggested that the Nazarenes were cave dwellers one part of the year and lived in houses the other part.

We have also noted that the flank of the Nebi Sa‘in, on which the venerated area is located, is far too steep, rocky, and pockmarked to support habitations.
^[475]
It is eminently possible, of course, that one or more grottoes and agricultural installations of Middle Roman-Byzantine times was covered by a roof, perhaps even enclosed by walls against the weather or for protection. This is probably why Bagatti detected one or two doorways in the venerated area, some walls, steps, etc.
^[476]

Most of the walls Bagatti discusses in
Excavations
belong to the various Church edifices raised on the site (pp. 80–97). On pages 115-18 he claims remnants of pre-Byzantine walls, but the most evidence for this that he can muster are numerous pieces of mortar found in a basin, blocks reused in the later Byzantine structure, and two fragments of a wall
in situ
. In the photo (
Exc
. fig. 69), large blocks produce a grand wall which hardly appears domestic, at least not for a humble dwelling.

In Bagatti’s masonry evidence it is impossible to get farther back chronologically than the fourth century CE. Joan Taylor, who carefully studied the structural evidence at Nazareth, notes: “The remains indicate that the entire area was used for agricultural processing activity. Domestic buildings may have been constructed over the complexes.”
^[477]
If such structures were domestic (a debatable issue) they were certainly from Late-Roman-Byzantine times.

The critical issue of chronology has been quite ignored in the traditional literature. Thus Finegan:

 Of the numerous grottoes at least several had served for domestic use, and had even been modified architecturally for this purpose. One of these, where walls were built against a grotto to make a habitation, had already been found by Viaud
under the convent adjoining the Church of the Annunciation and is shown in the photograph.
^[478]

No evidence exists to date these structural remains before Middle Roman times. The simplest explanation is that the few remnants of walls in the venerated area are late evidence of agricultural activity, as mentioned above.

In fact, Bagatti is on most tenuous ground when he attempts to date the little masonry evidence in the venerated area to the Early Roman era. All the accompanying movable evidence is Middle Roman and later. This is sufficient proof that the structural evidence should be similarly dated. A separate issue is whether those masonry remains are domestic or agricultural, an uncertainty which is reflected in the secondary literature:

In the rock-cut cavities [
under the CA
] it was possible to detect traces of
houses. Some uniform depressions apparently held the foundations of walls. The remains of these structures vanished when the bishop’s palace was built.
^[479]

Taylor writes: “It is now possible to conclude that there existed in Nazareth, from the first part of the fourth century, a small and unconventional church which encompassed a cave complex.”
^[480]
Yet, a wine press, collecting vat, cisterns, and silos are in the immediate area. The “cave complex” Taylor describes was surely related to these. When we factor in the sloping and rocky terrain, and the ubiquitous pits in the ground, we see an area quite unsuitable to habitation. In sum, the ceaseless literary refrain of ‘domestic caves’ comes neither from archaeological evidence nor from topography.

The reference literature is capable of gross exaggeration in regard to the few masonry findings in the venerated area:

Excavations revealed the remains of a wall
from a large public building dating to the 1
^st
century AD.
^[481]

Perhaps the author was influenced here by the accounts of Jesus preaching before many in the synagogue of Nazareth (Mk 6:2). However, no one has detected any evidence of such a “large public building” in the venerated area dating earlier than the first Christian structure, erected in Byzantine times.

Basins

 
In 1960 Bagatti wrote of a stepped wine collecting vat under the Church of St. Joseph.
^[482]
He radically altered his opinion a few years later, however, and referred to it as a basin for Jewish-Christian initiation or ritual immersion. The latter occurs in the 1967 Italian edition of
Excavations
, where he also writes of a similar basin under the CA (discovered too late for his 1960 article).
^[483]
In fact, Bagatti’s former impression was correct. Taylor has convincingly shown that these basins were collecting vats used in winemaking.
^[484]
This is evident both from their proximity to wine presses and to the fact that a
mikve
with a mosaic in the floor is extremely improbable. Bagatti dates the basins to Late Roman-Byzantine times.
^[485]
In this case he could be too late. Given that the village of Nazareth was established in Middle Roman times, these agricultural vats could be as early as second-century CE.

A II CE dating is arrived at (through a different reasoning) by Strange, who considers the “ritual bath” under the CA to be “perhaps as early as the 2d century but not after the 3d, perhaps for Jewish-Christians.”
^[486]
Yet, in 1997 Strange writes that the ritual bath is “third-century CE, or later.”
^[487]

Nowhere does Bagatti use the words
mikve
or
mikvaoth
to describe these basins. Nevertheless, these words have crept into the literature with the insinuation that those ritual baths are evidence of a Jewish village already in Second Temple times. It is unnecessary to cite these claims,
^[488]
for the basins in question were not
mikvaoth
, and nothing suggests they date to Second Temple times.

Coins

The earliest coin in the Nazareth basin is one of Emperor Constantius II (
r
. 337–51 CE).
^[489]
It can be noted that in 1889, Schumacher made a vague reference to undated coins found under the Dames de Nazareth convent, “which must have an ancient Jewish origin” (
monete trovate, devono avere un’antica origine giudaica
).
^[490]
No subsequent mention is made of those alleged coins.

The assertion of I–IV CE coins by Bagatti in a 1993 encyclopedia article is also vague and entirely gratuitous: “Two loculi graves [
at Nazareth
] found intact contained lamps, pottery, glass vessels, and beads—objects usually found with coins of the first to fourth centuries CE.”
^[491]
This is another example of introducing ‘I CE’ via a long dating range, where only the termination of that range is applicable (see “Graffiti,” p. 191 above). Though Bagatti’s statement may be valid for some other places, I CE coins have certainly not been found in the kokhim (loculi) at Nazareth.

Representative passages from the secondary literature

Repeatedly in the Nazareth literature, we find claims of a settlement either in Hellenistic times or at the turn of the era, claims which invariably rest on later Roman evidence that has been backdated into the time of Jesus, or even earlier. As we have seen for the Hellenistic Period, so also for the Early Roman Period there is no evidence that must be dated to the turn of the era—neither tombs nor oil lamps, pottery, inscriptions, coins,
etc
.

Nevertheless, there is great pressure to date much of the Nazareth material to the time of Christ. We have examined how this has taken place through one device, namely, by designating oil lamps and kokh tombs “Herodian.” Other structures, such as wine and olive presses, silos, and cisterns, span multiple eras. In these cases, such longevity has facilitated their backdating to the time of Christ because it is virtually impossible to prove that these structural elements did
not
exist at the turn of the era, particularly in the absence of a rigorous stratigraphic method, as has been the case with Nazareth archaeology. The main recourse left for dating, then, becomes the movable finds associated with those structures. In all cases except the two stone vessels, those finds
must
postdate the turn of the era. On the other hand, the stone vessels could be considered contemporary with the turn of the era,
at the very earliest
. This is the conclusion of our foregoing analysis of the Nazareth evidence.

We cannot consider all the passages in the secondary literature that make claims of a village in the time of Christ. They essentially rely upon the evidence we have considered in the foregoing pages and dismissed. We shall consider a few representative passages.

A.
In Finegan’s influential
Archaeology of the New Testament
, we read: “The findings already referred to (No. 35) provide positive evidence of the existence of a town at Nazareth in the time of Jesus.”
^[492]
Finegan specifically notes the following:

1. an agricultural village

2. “numerous grottoes, silos for grain, cisterns for water and oil, presses for raisins [
sic
] and olives, and millstones.”

3. pottery of the Roman period

4. several grottos adapted for domestic use

5. eighteen tombs of the kokhim type

6. pottery and other artefacts from two kokhim tombs dating “probably from the first to the third or fourth centuries of the Christian era.”

7. four kokhim tombs sealed with rolling stones

Using the results of our analysis of the evidence in the foregoing pages, we see that there is virtually nothing in the above list which is categorically false. The settlement was agricultural, there were indeed “numerous grottoes,” the pottery was Roman,
etc
. Point 6, with its nebulous “from the first to the third or fourth centuries,” is in fact correct. The pottery (
pre-70
the oil lamps) does date from I–IV CE (and beyond)—but none of it
requires
a I CE dating. All the oil lamps,
etc
., could date to early II CE.

The fourth point above is false—the grottos were not adapted for domestic use, but for agricultural use. Finally, point 5 is an underestimate of the number of kokh tombs simply because a few have been discovered since publication of Finegan’s book.

Though only one of the above points is arguably false (domestic use of the installations), Finegan’s overall conclusion is wholly incorrect: these points do
not
“provide positive evidence of the existence of a town at Nazareth in the time of Jesus.” A careful reading shows that none of the above points favors a settlement at the turn of the era. In fact, they all are entirely compatible with later Roman times. As we have seen, the “pottery of the Roman period” (point 3) is Middle-Late Roman, as are the kokhim and the agricultural structures Finegan mentions in point 1. The conclusion that these somehow date to the time of Jesus simply does not derive from the evidence. It is an example of global backdating.

B.
Crossan and Reed write:

Like the rest of Galilee, which lay relatively uninhabited until the Late Hellenistic Period, Jews settled [
Nazareth
] under Hasmonean
expansionist policies.
^[493]